Monday, April 11, 2005

Gripe water


The mighty Economic Times talks about a lowly product, gripe water, a category dominated by TTK Healthcare's Woodwards brand that sees minimal advertising of a boring, repetitive kind. Almost all pediatricians are against its use, and some actively attack it. In spite of these problems, the product is a best seller. So, what gives? Vikram Doctor has the answer!

An interesting quote from a doctor who thinks this product is useless: "Gripe water is really only good at soothing the parents"! The company, of course, says these attacks by pediatricians are misguided, since their main complaint -- that the product used to have small amounts of alcohol -- is no longer valid; their product has been alcohol-free since the 80's.

The article also talks about colicky babies who are fed this concoction; I am not so sure. When I grew up, babies were given gripe water routinely -- colic or no colic. I am quite sure this sort of indiscriminate use is still common.

We really have no experience with this product whatsoever, since our son grew up without too much of a fuss. I guess we just got lucky. Thanks Aadhu!

Saturday, April 09, 2005

Doug Henwood's Wall Street


Doug Henwood's 1997 book, Wall Street, is now available online. Hat-tip: Brad DeLong, who says "It's a very good book", and recommends it highly. Daniel Davies offers a solid endorsement for the book: he says it could equally well be a textbook for MBA courses.

Abdul Kalam on science in India


The President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam's inaugural speech at a recent Indian Physics Association seminar at Kharagpur appears in today's Hindu as an op-ed. It is about attracting bright and enthusiastic youth to science as the major challenge that we face. Here are some of his suggestions:

An assured career in science is essential for a certain number of high quality committed scientists with aptitude towards research. There should be a minimum annual intake of about 300 M.Sc and 100 Ph.D scientists with proper emoluments and assured career growth in organisations such as ISRO, DRDO, Atomic Energy, CSIR, DST, and universities. Private and government funded universities must be encouraged to appoint M.Sc and Ph.D scientists selected through a nationally coordinated competitive selection process. This will be a great motivator for science students and their parents. It will be an assurance to youth and their parents that the future is secure once they take up a career in science.

Experienced scientists and policy makers must recognise the talent available in their organisations irrespective of their position. They must empower young scientists to create state-of-the art laboratories once they have concrete thoughts and vision. Vikram Sarabhai in the initial stages of ISRO brought in a culture of management, which encouraged and satisfied the vision of young scientists that collectively succeeded in making the mission of the organisation a reality.

Universities and Research & Development institutions must encourage and facilitate young scientists to write quality research papers in frontier areas and in prestigious journals. They should also facilitate youth to present papers in national and international seminars and symposia, which will enable them to assess their standard against international benchmarks. Encouraging youth to be lead authors while publishing joint research would be a very good gesture, which youngsters will cherish for many years.

Based on my experience of interacting with 600,000 students, I feel they are looking for role models to follow after their 10+2 career. Approximately seven million students appear for the plus two examinations every year; and three million of them are from the science stream. To attract them to a career in science, we need many novel ideas.

Youth must be made to understand the beauty of doing science, the pleasure of doing science, and the ultimate bliss when results of science make you understand nature, master it, control it, and finally make things that improve the quality of life of humankind. Every scientist must pledge that he or she will spend at least some time visiting schools to ignite young minds by recounting his or her experiences.

Laptops for poor kids?


Uh oh, Nicholas Negroponte (of MIT's Media Lab, whose audacious plan to use Indian Government funds to run its own version in India was scuttled by Arun Shourie about 12 - 24 months ago) is deeply into development through ICT, again! The Hindu had this AP report about his efforts to get low-priced laptops into the hands of children in the developing countries. Apparently, Dr. Negroponte has made a pitch for this plan in January at the World Economic Forum, and has a few corporate backers: Advanced Micro Devices, Google and News Corp.

Now, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such pious initiatives. The only problem is from a simple fact: what the children in developing countries really need is proper education -- good public (or inexpensive private) schools, teachers, blackboard, and .... hold your nose ... toilets! I certainly wouldn't like our governments to get into such fancy projects because of all the good media they get, and divert scarce resources to them instead of things that would make a real difference -- like schools.

Read the report anyway, and there is some interesting information regarding technology bottlenecks (mostly in the form of display monitor) that need to be tackled in creating a 100 Dollar laptop. There is also a reference to the Simputer, "a $220 hand-held device developed by Indian scientists in 2001 that only last year became available and is not selling well". Four of our colleagues from the Institute were involved in developing the simputer, and their version is being marketed in India under the brand Amida Simputer. While it has some really cool features, I guess in this age of 4000 rupee mobile phones, it would really be difficult to sell a 11000 rupee hand-held device.

Update: looks like the "simputer is a failure" meme has been slash-dotted. This time, the discussion is about this AP story.

Thursday, April 07, 2005

Director Balaram


Deccan Herald, Bangalore's very own newspaper, has reported that Prof. Balaram is the choice of the search committee appointed to select the next Director of the Indian Institute of Science, where I work. The reporter has of course hedged things by saying that his selection needs to be approved by several layers of bureaucracy, including the President of the country.

This is absolutely fantastic news for us in the Institute. I am sure many people have known the public face of Prof. Balaram as the editor of Current Science, India's leading journal for science and science news; in his editorials, Prof. Balaram has tackled some of the pressing issues that this country faces in the realms of science education and research. In the discussions on the practice of science in India, his has always been a voice of reason, sanity and understated passion.

I just want to recount an episode from 2002. In its issue dated 25th October, the magazine Science reported that Shobo Bhattacharya (then a scientist at NEC Research Institute in Princeton, New Jersey) was chosen to head the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research, where he still is the director. In the article, the reporter quoted several senior and "very senior" scientists from India complaining that there were very few bright scientists left in the country to take up such leadership positions, and that there is a " missing generation"; let me recount some of their quotes:

  • C.N.R. Rao: "There is a lack of leaders in the age group of 45 to 55 years..."
  • M.G.K. Menon: "Without question there is a certain crisis"
  • Goverdhan Mehta: "With our scientific output on the decline, this [leadership crisis] was inevitable ..., and the problem is going to become even more acute"

The rest of the report is peppered with "missing generation", "slim pickings", "matter of serious concern", and other such nonsense. Reading this report was so painful for me and many others -- don't get me wrong here: our pain was not because of the selection of Shobo Bhattacharya; after all, if he was the best among the contenders, he should be chosen. Period. Our anguish and pain were due to the derogatory remarks (that were plainly contrary to any objectively observable facts) about a whole generation of younger scientists; my first reaction on reading these remarks was, "Uh oh, these guys are so clueless they don't even know what to say when a reporter's mike is in front of them". After a bit more of thought, I concluded that these guys are truly -- and shamelessly -- self-serving; after all, the beneficiaries of the meme that there is a missing generation in science leadership are just the guys spreading this meme actively; using this meme as a pretext, they get to continue to lead science in the country -- possibly for life!

Well, you would not be surprised to know that many of us felt very strongly at that time that these senior scientists did a great disservice to the cause of science in this country through their irresponsible statements. Therefore, you can imagine our immense relief when Prof. Balaram echoed our views (and then some) in this Current Science editorial two months later. Read his editorial, and you will see why I am happy that he is going to be the leader of our Institute.

Joel on FogBugz


Here is a very interesting series of five articles by that great writer on software development, Joel Spolsky, whom I have mentioned before. In this series titled "The Road to FogBugz 4.0", Joel recounts the history of development of the new version of his company's flagship software. I really don't have any idea about FogBugz, but I can appreciate much of what he says about software development; and, he says a lot also about much else about running a business, the role of interns, strategy, pricing, and so on. Read the articles; they are educational, informative, entertaining and great!

Along the way -- in the fourth article, I think -- I learned of a couple of really nice sites. One of them is the CSS Zen Garden which is devoted to website designs using nothing but web standards established by W3C and other organizations. In particular, it uses just XHTML and CSS to produce beautiful designs for web pages (it contains an archive of designs contributed by others). All this may sound rather drab, but take a look at their astonishingly fresh designs, and prepare yourself to be amazed!

The other link I found is to Mike Gunderlo's site The Daily Grind. Mike's advice for writers, while seemingly written to an audience of writers about computers and software, should be useful for others as well.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Economic lessons


Prof. Bradford DeLong seems to be in a mood for entertaining questions and to answer them in a nice teaching mode. He answers two different correspondents (undergraduate students from different places) who ask him the following questions in economics:

  • The first correspondent asks "whether or not Keynes was correct about deficit spending during depressions. By that, I mean whether deficits will provide at least a temporary boost in output and employment". Brad provides " a nice answer; it begins with "It all depends", and goes on to give the criteria that one can use to judge the probability of success of any Keynesian intervention.
  • The second correspondent asks, "However, reading Das Kapital and other things, I am seeing a different interpretation of how an item is valued, and the value of labor verses what I have been taught in traditional classes and I need more understanding. What is the “value” of a product, or of labor? Brad provides the answer using an extended example with which he concludes that the labor theory of value is "simply not a useful tool for either moral philosophy or political action".

Both the posts are crisp and clear, and written in a simple enough language that even a non-economist like me can get something out of them. In particular, the second one on Marx's theory contains some absolutely delicious piece of writing.

Why do academics blog?


Over at Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell talks about blogging in academia, and more specifically about why he is into blogging and what new things blogging allows him to do. He predicts that while full-time blogging is not going to take any academics away from their profession, part time blogging will continue to attract more and more academics its way.

Let me just say that I agree entirely ...


PS: It has been a rather dry fortnight; things got a bit too wild at home -- almost all of us were ill, a couple of them really badly. Now that things are back to normal, I am happy to be back.

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Annals of academic angst


Well, it has been a while since I posted here. Things were very hectic at home, with everyone deciding to fall sick, almost as if on cue, at the same time. However, everyone is back to their normal business, and it feels good to be back.

Today, I provide links to just a couple of posts; while the posts are by academics in liberal arts / humanities, everyone should be able to identify with the deeply felt views expressed by them.

The first one is from Adam Kotsko (probably a budding academic), who is grappling with what he needs to do to pass academic muster in his chosen field of philosophy. Though he likes conversing with great minds (by reading their texts), he seems exasperated by the "need to make these texts into something, turn them toward the goal of producing my own piece of writing so that I will continue to meet the requirements of scholarly productivity which graduate study is socializing into me". He finds himself trying to "figure out some way to squeeze out a paper on Zizek's use of Kierkegaard, so that I can send it off and people will publish it, so that I can write down on a piece of paper that it has been published".

Look at how an experienced academic -- Prof. Bradford DeLong, a Berkeley economist -- poses the same problem. Academia should really be about conversing with great minds and finding a compelling voice for yourself -- all the while having a great deal of fun. Academic pursuit's resemblance to a game whose goal is to build a CV of professional achievements, if it is taken seriously, will only lead to cynicism that makes you feel let down.

Best thing about both these posts is how beautifully they are able to express -- through just, plain words -- the deepest feelings of their authors. I wish I could do that ...

Note: This was originally posted over at the blog of small things on 5 April 2005.

Update: Over at Uncertain Principles, Chad Orzel displays a different type of angst. This time, his musings are about "really important work" vs. "good enough" work, with the former being defined as that worthy of Physical Review Letters (we know what the latter is, don't we? ;-). Thankfully, his inner voice has put him back on track:

[...] every little bit helps. Small papers count almost as much as important ones, when it comes to demonstrating a research track record for a tenure review. By continuing to think big, I'm shooting myself in the foot ...

Monday, March 21, 2005

Chidambaram, Budget-05, IISc, 100 Crores


In this year's budget speech presented to the Parliament on 28 February 2005, our Finance Minister, Mr. P. Chidambaram devoted an entire paragraph to IISc! Here it is, in the the subsection titled "Institutions of Excellence":

92. On January 6, 2005, the Prime Minister spoke about his intention to set up a Knowledge Commission to look into the issue of building quality human capital. Government believes that investments in institutions of higher education and Research and Development organizations are as important as investments in physical capital and physical infrastructure. What we need are world class universities, and we must make a beginning with one institution. We must have a university that will be ranked alongside Oxford and Cambridge or Harvard and Stanford. I am happy to inform the House that we have selected the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, which enjoys a high reputation as a centre of excellence in research and development. We shall work to make IISc, in a few years, a world class university. I propose to provide an additional sum of Rs.100 crore as a grant for this purpose.

Here are my views as an IISc insider (I do plan to post my views as a citizen a little later). Needless to say, I am thrilled that IISc has been given extra money, because I do feel that there are important things that need to be done in our Institute that cost money -- for example, infrastructure: quality of electric power, internet connectivity and bandwidth, and housing for faculty and students. A second and rather indirect benefit is that this recognition of our academic excellence by our pay-masters will also help us in attracting good students and good faculty. This will start a virtuous cycle that could take the Institute higher and higher still.

After listing some of the benefits for our Institute from this 100 Crore grant, I must point out here that I resent the comparisons to Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Stanford. Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against these great universities. IMHO, every institution -- ours is no exception -- should constantly strive for greater levels of excellence, without worrying too much about where it is in some pecking order. To evaluate academic performance based on a silly worldwide comparison is just that - silly. Similarly, I think the sentence about making IISc "a world class university" is also silly. To me, what really matters is, not whether we are world class, but whether we make concerted efforts to become better than what we are today (See [1] below).

Finally, let us turn to this question of how the media and the common folks have responded to this special treatment of the IISc? I have not done any exhaustive search, but the print media have been either gushing or gently positive about our Institute. This Outlook story really gushes. This story at ZDNet India (originally from Business Standard) says some good things, and draws important connections between attracting good students, and the emergence of MNC research centres in India (GE, GM, Daimler Chrysler, etc). Times of India, on the other hand, has carried a series of generally positive short reports about various facets of our Institute (Sorry, I have only two links! Their website is so poorly organized, I have not been able to get the links to the others). However, these Times reports contain egregious factual errors! For example, one of them said we don't have an electron microscope and the 100 Crore grant will help us get one! Another gave generously inflated numbers for (a) our annual expenditures and (b) our research publications! See footnote [2] below.

What about the others, including the common man and woman? I suggest that you check out this blog post by Amit Chakrabarty (and the readers' comments) over at the Zoo Station and the comments at the end of the Outlook story. There are quite a few negative remarks there. For example, Amit ends the post with this:

A more meaningful criticism of the IISc is what I alluded to earlier: it's been far less successful at building its brand name than the much younger IITs. As a very young prof working far away from India I can hardly lay claim to knowing the solution but it's clear to me that the 100 crore gift can only help. For starters, perhaps the IISc would consider hiring someone to create a professional website for the institute that actually announces this generous gift? Come on, IIsc! It doesn't take Nobel prize winners to get your website up to Oxbridge standards.

For some (justifiable) envy and disdain among our brethren in our country's grossly underfunded universities, take a look at this Indian Express story (which probably appeared in its Pune edition). Here is a rather understated quote from this story:

While most agree that it is but befitting that IISc get the first crack at upgradation, the reluctance in putting a finger on university-strengthening measures hasn't gone unnoticed.

Let us be clear: all our actions, not to mention our academic performance, will be keenly watched. Any misstep on our part will be used as a stick to beat us (and the parties of the present Government) with.

Finally, I hope our Government will get its act together and start making serious efforts to improve our education system at all levels: primary, secondary, higher secondary, college and research. Particularly in the last two categories with which I am most familiar, our Government should really ensure that institutions, and undergraduate institutions and universities in particular, get adequate funding to make education at these levels modern and truly "world class". Now, that is a goal that our Government should really like!

[1] This editorial Economic Times (7 March 2005; unfortunately, you have to keep clicking next page, until you get to page 3 that has the third editorial titled "Style over substance". See footnote [3] below.) is another example of such silliness. According to it, the recent achievements of Sania Mirza and Narain Karthikeyan are all really not worth celebrating. These editorialist worthies do not seem to realize that these people have achieved what no other Indian has achieved so far, and that, by itself, is a great cause for celebration. I would really pity the sons and daughters of these editors: if they adopt the same standards in their personal lives, their children are probably getting pained by them for not doing anything "world class".

[2] For the record, according to our own internal documents, our budget for the financial year 2004-05 was about 82 Crores of non-plan and 27 Crores of plan expenditures, and about 40 Crores of externally funded research projects. Similarly, our publications number about 1200 per year, and is about 10 % of the national figure for all of India in the fields of science and engineering.

[3] Can you imagine a newspaper website that cannot even separate individual articles in a day's editorial? Indiatimes does it: it puts all the editorial articles in one single page; and asks you to keep clicking "next page". These guys don't know a professional website from a horse's behind; I promise you that I will not buy their shares when they do their IPO!

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Something is really strange here ...


I have been wondering about the tactics that Chidambaram, our Finance Minister, employed in his budget. (A) He gives all kinds of tax breaks to both individuals and corporates. (B) He adds two provisions that introduce new taxes: the fringe benefit taxes on companies, and a tax of Rs. 10 for every 10K withdrawal from banks in cash.

Assuming that this year's economy stays the same as last year's, let us consider the following:

  • under the tax breaks in (A), he loses X rupees, and
  • under the new tax measures in (B), he gains a certain fraction f of X rupees (i.e., fX rupees).

Now, our society, like every other society on earth, loves its tax breaks. However, it does not much care for the exact magnitude of the tax breaks. In other words, if each corporate stands to gain Rs. 2 crore under plan (A), the corporates would be equally happy with 1 crore! This is because they would not even know what it is really like to have a tax break worth 2 crores or 1.5 crores or 4 crores or even 0.2 crores. The same argument applies to individuals as well. A tax break of 5K would make me about as happy as a tax break of 10K. You may say, "Come on, you dumbo, certainly 5K should make you less happy (even sadder, perhaps) than 10K!". You would be right, only when I am given a choice (post facto) between 10K and 5K; but before the budget speech, I have no idea about how much I am going to gain, so any tax break that he announces would first lead to a sigh of relief, and then to some happiness.

So, here is the bottomline: the very reality of a tax break seems to heighten the ecstacy levels of corporates as well as individuals. If you accept this reasoning, don't you think Chidambaram would have been better off to (C) give us a break worth only (1-f) X rupees, rather than giving us X under (A) and taking fX under (B)?

Now what has his choice of (A) + (B) given him? Does anyone praise him for (A) and then complain a little about (B)? Hell, no! He gets castigated for doing (B) everywhere, and very little praise for (A)!

If he had done (C) instead, do you think there would be any of this great noise about imposition of an unfair tax on 'legitimate business expenses'?

P.S.: (1) However, there is a distinct possibility that he probably knows much more than any of us (including me!) about his tax measures. My guess is that he is hoping to mop up much more than X through his measures under (B)!

(2) Another possibility is that he did not intend to incorporate (B) at all, except to deflect fire from the Left parties! This sounds more plausible if you look at the current fervour among the corporate types in giving Chidambaram a hard time; as a result, the Left cannot really complain that the budget is too business-friendly. Also, it is quite likely that the businesspeople have already been clued in on this, and they are playing their assigned role of complaining incessantly about the inherent unfairness in the budget!

(3) Perhaps, I have been reading too much of American press and blogs that make me see deep conspiracies everywhere I turn ... ;-)

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

More on Summers


This is just a set of pointers to a whole bunch of posts that were made by bloggers after the release of the full text of the speech by Larry Summers that caused such an uproar when the story broke first.

Prof. B**** : More on Summers
Elizabeth Anderson : What is troubling Harvard?
Matthew Yglesias : Summers Redux and Why so mad?
Brad DeLong : Academic filters and The Eighty-hour week
Kieran Healy : Mending the kids, again and Summers lovin'
Mark Kleiman : Larry Summers redux
P. Z. Myers (Pharyngula) : It's more than just math
and finally,
Matthey Yglesias, again : The Case for Shrill

Happy Women's Day!

Atanu and Islam


I read this post by Atanu Dey the other day [if that link doesn't work, this one might]. It is all an entirely reasonable post on the topic of "hunger banquet", and actually, quite interesting. What really got to me in this post is the following:

"Sympathy is all you need my friend, and sympathy is all you need
And sympathy is all you need my friend
For there is not enough love to go around."

Thus sang Cat Stevens. (That is before he converted to Islam and became known as Yusuf Islam, and in keeping with his adopted creed, decided that murdering people was the best way to effect change in the world.)

As soon as I saw this, I said to myself: "Whoa!". At the end of this post, there were a few commenters pointing out that this smart-alecky aside on Islam is (a) unnecessary, and hence, gratuitous, and (b) totally out of character. However, his replies to his comments appear to betray, shall we say, certain pre-dispositions. Well, read the whole post, the comments thread and Atanu's response to some of the comments; then make up your own mind!

A few days later I found a post by Brad Delong with these opening words: "The highly-thoughtful Atanu Dey's Deeshaa wins the Best Indiblog Award". Now, I really couldn't take it. I posted a comment on Brad's post, to which I found a reply by Atanu, to which I replied. Since it has been nearly 40 days since the original post by Brad, I said finally that I am moving all further discussion to my blog.

I expect to post further thoughts on this episode later. So, let me gather everything in one place here .... The comments that we made on Brad's website are:

Me :

Yeah, Deesha is certainly an interesting blog. It was on my regular reading list, until I found this:

"... Thus sang Cat Stevens. (That is before he converted to Islam and became known as Yusuf Islam, and in keeping with his adopted creed, decided that murdering people was the best way to effect change in the world)."

I don't know about Cat Stevens deciding on anything, but I am sure you would agree that this is an insult to an entire "creed". It appears in a post on "hunger banquet", so this insult is truly gratuitous!

How can a thoughtful person -- who wishes to help his country by spreading some economic wisdom -- spew out such hateful words about an entire people, 120 million of whom are also his fellow-citizens?

It is such a shame ...

Atanu :

Did Cat Stevens convert to Islam? Yes. Did he call for the murder of Salman Rushdie for his book after his conversion? Yes. Does Islam require the murder of apostates and those who oppose Islam? Yes.

[You would get some argument about that...]

Is his action consistent with the tenets of his adopted faith? Yes.

Which part of what I wrote is not true?

If what I wrote is misconstrued as "spewing hateful words about an entire people", I suggest a course in remedial reading and critical thinking.

Me again :

Atanu,

I haven't had any course in remedial reading yet! However, I believe one needs only a small dose of critical thinking to realize the following:

(a) Ancient scriptures of any religion would show, upon closer inspection, certain things that its own adherents would find either embarrassing or abhorrent. In other words, there may be some crazy stuff in the scriptures, but the followers, quite sensibly, don't take them seriously.

Today, more than a billion Muslims reject the idea of death sentence for blasphemy. They would recoil in horror at the murder of someone because of a blasphemy alleged in a fatwa issued by a head of state. These modern Muslims, who form an overwhelming majority, deserve our support in their struggle against fundamentalist forces. What they don't deserve are cheap shots that try to tar their religion as 'bad', based on one man's bad thoughts and behaviour.

(b) Horrible atrocities and vicious crimes have been committed in the name of religion almost throughout history, and every religion has also been (at some point or the other) at the receiving end. If patriotism is the last resort of every scoundrel, religion would seem to be the first! Given the universality of this phenomenon across all major religions, why single out Islam for harsh treatment?

Well, while dealing with one's own private prejudices is bad enough, thinking about other people's publicly expressed prejudice and bigotry is truly depressing...

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Toolbar tricks in Google


Google has released the beta version of its Toolbar 3.0. Many people have used its earlier versions (I have one embedded in my firefox browser, I do find it useful for search). So, the newer, better version of the toolbar should be great, right? Well, yes and no.

See, the problem with Toolbar 3 (which the earlier versions did not have) is the autolink feature. What it could do is this: say you are reading a page that talks about a book, and in order to help you find it, the author of this page very helpfully provides its ISBN in the page itself. Now, while you are viewing this page, if you click the autolink button, it would highlight the ISBN with a link, and if you click on the link, it could take you to some online bookstore of Google's choice (which happens to be Amazon.com). Similarly, if the toolbar program recognizes an address in the page that you are viewing, clicking on it will take you to -- guess what -- Google maps!

I can still hear you saying what is the problem with the toolbar? It all sounds so useful, and helpful. Well, read the posts by Robert Scobler, the Geek Blogger from Microsoft, here, and here. See also Steve Rubel and Dave Winer.

The basic point that they all make is that everything in a webpage (including links, or lack of them) belongs to its author. Some stupid browser tool cannot be allowed to mess with the content without the author's permission. If, for example (Google's toolbar doesn't do this; however, it may be implemented by some other company, which does not believe in Google's philosophy that says "don't do evil"), the webpage author links to some other online bookstore, but Google overrides this link, and provides an autolink to Amazon.com; I am sure you would agree that it is unethical. Even more bizarre would be when the toolbar overrides (at the browser) all the links in, say, the Barnes and Noble website to provide autolinks to Amazon! Well, I could give you many more examples, but I think you get the point.

Well, there are people on the other side, too! See Fred von Lohmann and Cory Doctorow. They make some interesting points, to which Scoble provides good answers here. In this last post, he seems to concede defeat, but goes on to suggest some ways in which both the user and the content provider can exercise some control over the webpage, so that Google's control over these links can be overridden in a more transparent way.

Clearly, the last word is yet to be spoken.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Some lessons in economics


Brad Delong has a post today, that describes his toy model to explain why capital gains in the stock market lag the real economy (or something like that). I am not able to get the link to his post right now, so you will have to get it yourself!

The second link for today is is to a post by Daniel Davies over at Crooked Timber, who discusses Peter Griffiths's book "An Economist's Tale". Just a quick quote from the post:

The book is a detailed case study of what Griffiths did when he was working for the government of Sierra Leone during a period when the World Bank suddenly got the free market religion. It’s a fantastic read, and by reading it you will get two valuable pieces of information; you’ll understand what economic consultants (those people whose jobs are advertised in the front bits of the Economist) actually do for a living, and you’ll understand the exact why and wherefore of what it is that people are complaining about when they protest against the Bretton Woods institutions and the Washington Consensus.